All is quiet on the southern front lately.  There have been a lot of things on my mind, but one of them, unfortunately, hasn’t been writing about it all on here.

I did have a dream last night about bloggers I read, though.  I’m not sure if that’s a sign that I read too many blogs or if I’ve been missing writing on my own.  Or just that I wanted to hang out at a funky restaurant/ice-skating lake with a whole bunch of women and one of their kids.

My subconscious is a strange place.

At least I’m not dreaming about Excel macros anymore.  I’ve been doing so much work on macros at work that I went to sleep and dreamed about working on them some more.  Talk about frustrating.  I couldn’t get them to work even while dreaming!  I found someone willing to help me at work, though, so now I think I’ve reached completion on my many macros.

THIS IS ALL ABOUT MACROS, WHICH IS BORING TO MOST PEOPLE.  IF YOU’RE NOT INTERESTED, SKIP AHEAD UNTIL YOU SEE THE “ALL CLEAR”

It started out simple enough.  I wanted an index in the front of a workbook.  The workbook had worksheets for each project, each needing a specific type of paperwork completed, each worksheet keeping the numbers used to identify those document organized neatly.  But it was turning into an enormous workbook.  So I wanted something that would look at all the worksheet names and make an index in the first page of the book.  I ended up with a macro that puts the tabs in alphanumerical order, makes an index looking at those names, and then creates a hyperlink to those pages so there’s no need to sort through the sheets to find the right one.  It’s the coolest thing ever.  I snagged part of it directly from the internet and had my coworker help me get other parts working, but I think I learned a lot about how macros work and put in a good deal of my own effort.

Of course, it looks like that worksheet is going to be obsolete by the beginning of November.  But until then, it’s fantastic!

And then I started working on macros that I’d developed in another workbook that was giving me troubles.  It was set up so that at the check of a box, the date the box was checked would show up with a comment, that information would be added to another sheet in the workbook, and then the date would show up in another workbook altogether.  It’s a nifty piece of work, but it was clunky.  The date in the other workbook shows up on a grid depending on who checked the box (they have their own tabs in the workbook) and which project it was for.  For each sheet in the book, for each checkbox, I had to identify exactly which cell the date should go into.  It was a total of 8 different cells and I had to set it by hand for each workbook, of which there’s one for each project.

It was driving me crazy.

Now, not only does the date and comment show up next to the checkbox, an email opens up to let people know that the box has been checked, and a note shows up underneath the last line of text in a specific column (no matter if there are spaces between cells with text on the page).  The list of information that was being added to another sheet in the workbook was removed because it wasn’t necessary.

AND the date that shows up on the grid finds its way automatically to the correct spot!!  The only thing I have to do is change the file name for each new project, which I already had to do, and put the project number on the first page of the sheet, which, also, I already had to do.

And, unseen by all my users, the code behind it all is about 75% smaller than it was in the first place.  It’s AWESOME.

Again, I had a lot of help from my coworker, but I did most of this on my own, and some of what I was doing was something he hadn’t seen before or considered doing.  I’m using “Find” instead of “Loop” and he’d never seen that before, apparently.

I am very proud of myself.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last several days.  The computer systems were completely off-line Thursday and Friday.  A cooler leaked onto the server and the whole thing went down.  It was oodles of fun, let me tell you.  No clock-in clock, no email, no drives on the network, most intranet functions were down.  I had a few meeting and we sat around chatting and brainstorming, but not able to actually accomplish anything.

So I worked on macros.  I’m such a geek.

ALL CLEAR!

In other news, Justin found out yesterday morning that his family’s dog died Sunday evening from a heart attack.  It was a Bichon Friese named Smidge and he was awesome.  Friendly and smart and loyal.  He looked like a polar bear teddy bear.  He thought Justin was his brother.  They’d had the dog for about 8 years.  We’re all sad about it.

I spent time yesterday looking at adopting a Bichon.  When we do get a dog, that’s the kind we’d like to get because it wouldn’t bother our allergies.  Plus, they’re just fun, adorable little dogs.  It turns out there’s a place that has about 100 rescued Bichons and Bichon-mixes, according to their PetFinder listings.  Unfortunately, they’re in Oklahoma.  And we’re not ready to get a dog just yet.  Even though it would be really nice.

The biopsy on the mole on my arm came back normal.  The cut there is healing slowly.  I finally picked up bandages that fit and stick.  It’s good because the butterfly bandages I was using to keep the small stripe-shaped bandages to stay in place left me with rash.  The bug bite appears to be clearing up with the use of the ointment the dermatologist gave me.  And the jury is still out on the fungal infection.  It seems to be clearing up, but I always think that.  And then it’s not actually gone when I finish the length of the treatment.  Yeah—this is the 3rd or 4th time I’ve tried to get rid of this thing.  I’ve had it for a while.  It’s a good thing it just looks like dry skin.

We rearranged my office over the weekend.  We even got pictures up on the wall!  After a year of living in this place, I finally have pictures in my office.  It’s a good feeling.  I love sitting in there, reading, listening to music.  It’s a very comfortable place.  Now I just have to figure out what to do with all the books still sitting on the floor of Justin’s office instead of in my closet.

And then we’ll figure out how to do Justin’s office and get pictures hung in there, too.

Eventually . . . .

As long as it doesn’t cost us any money because we’re still trying to buy Justin a car.  Yeah, still haven’t finished that one yet.  Does it seem like it’s been a while?  That’s because it has.

And we’re still making sure that we keep enough money in the savings account to pay for tickets for Christmas.  Of course, we could just put them on the credit card, but we finally have everything all on ONE credit card.  You have no idea how great I feel about that one. 

We started out with three maxed-out credit cards.  We finally got one totally paid off, and got the others low enough that I could transfer the balance of the one with higher interest onto the low-interest rate card.  And there was no fee to transfer it over!  That card is now just about maxed again, but we have a singular credit card bill to pay and that is more of a relief than I expected it to be.  And if we can keep up with payments like I’ve been putting into that gaping hole of a money drain, then I expect we’ll have it paid off sometime in the next year.

But getting back to Christmas!  I’ve already been looking at tickets and trying to figure out exactly when I (or we) will fly into town, how long I (we) will stay and who I’d like to see while I’m in town.  I figured out how I’m doing presents.  I’ll buy them here or have them shipped here, wrap them, and then ship them all together in a box to someone up north.  That way, we don’t have to travel with gifts or buy them when we get there, and then wrap them when we get there.  We can take care of all of that while down here, and then just send one heavily insured box up north to wait for us.

Now I just need to know who we need to buy presents for and what they want.

Hint.  Heavy, stinkin’ hint.

Yeah, I know it’s August.  I’m just a little excited!

And rambling, apparently, because I just hit the bottom of page 3 in this Word document.  I did say that there’s been a lot of things on my mind.  I’ll wrap it up here for today, though.  Enough babbling.  There’ll be more time for more thoughts tomorrow.